


Rural Boys Watch The Apocalypse

by muppetstiefel



Series: drabbles [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Based on a Poem, End of the World, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Richie Tozier-centric, Soft Richie Tozier, Stanley Uris-centric, THIS IS DEPRESSING, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23545504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: "He’s writhing under Richie’s scrutiny, dodging it, even though there’s nowhere to run anymore. Everything will end, anyway. There’s a finality to the end of the world, and an intensity that Stan chose to spend it with Richie."
Relationships: Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Series: drabbles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1473572
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Rural Boys Watch The Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the poem Rural Boys Watch The Apocalypse by Keaton St. James

Stan’s pants are dirty. Just the hem of the leg, smeared with mud, and tinged slightly green with the start of a grass stain. They’re khaki, like always, a dull sort of beige that meet at his mid-drift, where there is a shirt tucked in to them carefully.

And the world is wrong, wrong in so many ways, but it’s mostly wrong right now because Stan’s pants are dirty. Richie can’t stop thinking about it, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to spend their last moments thinking about how Stan’s pants are dirty in a way they never have been. He had thrown himself over the fence just seconds before, and in all their years of having connecting gardens, Stan has never done that before. That’s probably when his pants became the offending crime scene, because the fence is all dead-wood, rotting where it stands. His father had asked him to build a new one, but he’d never found the time.

There’s even less time now. Not even enough time to run Stan’s pants through a cold wash.

He’s sweating too. Richie could reach out and touch his hair, and his fingertips would come away shining and wet. But Stan would hate that, so he doesn’t. He shoves his hands into his pockets instead and leans forward, trapping them between his legs and his stomach, till the urge dies a little.

“Will you stop staring at me?” Stan doesn’t sound irritated, just affronted, and a little uncomfortable. He’s writhing under Richie’s scrutiny, dodging it, even though there’s nowhere to run anymore. Everything will end, anyway. There’s a finality to the end of the world, and an intensity that Stan chose to spend it with _Richie_.

He’s still not sure how it’s all going to end, but what’s the point in asking? Astronomy was never his strong point – the stars will die, or the sun will burn them up, or something will crash and they’ll go out like the dinosaurs. It’s only right, Richie thinks, that they should burn up in the dust like the creatures before them. A twisted sort of revenge. He’s always been a big fan of Jurassic Park. It’s a low kind of thrilling feeling, knowing he’ll go out the way they did, massive and historic. Maybe he would’ve studied dinosaurs, if he had more time. Maybe he would’ve run for president, or studied the very asteroid that could kill them. The dying possibilities in his mind make him feel a little dizzy, so instead he tips his head towards the sky.

The stars are dying; one by one, they’re slowly flickering out, till the sky is quiet, weeping with dust trails of dissolving atoms and particles. It would be sad if it wasn’t the last thing left in the universe – the sky, and Stan, hugging his knees in stained pants, sat on Richie’s porch at the end of the world, watching him with an expectancy.

He’s holding a bottle in his fist, and he sets it between the two of them. The sound is resounding in the quiet – Richie always thought the end of the world would be loud, that stars would scream when they died, and that the neighbours would riot, light fires and run down the street. Where are the horsemen of the apocalypse? Gabriel, and his trumpet, and the fires of heaven and hell? Everyone left. Everyone went home, to their own parents, to cry in their arms when the neat line of time is smudged out.

“Let’s celebrate,” Stan is saying into the quietness, lips twisted into a bizarre smile at his own morbid joke. He pulls at the cork stopper on the wine till it gives way, then empties the bottle into his lips. He wipes at the sticky sweetness with the back of his hand, hand tugging at lips, then hands the bottle to Richie. He holds it up in lieu of a toast.

“To the end of the world?” He suggests, too good-natured for the lump in his throat, but Stan declines with a small downturn of his eyes. There’s nothing left but acceptance now, and to look it in the face. At first, Richie had cried – wept, into the arms of anyone who would hold him. Then, he was angry when he cleared out his locker. What was it all for? The books and photos and crumpled tests seem pointlessly heavy when he hauled them all home. Everyone left them, and Richie was angry about that for a while too. His friends fled home, or to distant family, or away, where they thought they may survive. Eddie had been angry that Richie wasn’t even going to try, but what was the point? It was over, and he had realised that when acceptance had settled in his stomach. He stopped waking up sad, or angry, or desperate for some sort of purchase, and instead woke up, uncaring if he hadn’t.

Stan didn’t leave him. Stan is still solid, concrete beside him, hand closing around Richie’s, which is clamped around the neck of the bottle. He raises it, forces it up, and with it Richie’s gaze. “To the stars,” Stan says, and Richie agrees. No one will toast to them tonight, as they die and disintegrate, so the two boys alone on the front porch will have to do.

“I said goodbye to my parents,” Stan’s voice is grounded, and steady, and so different to the watery intonation Richie has heard since the news broke. His own mother hasn’t been able to talk to him without a slight waver between syllables, still mourning something Richie embraced long ago. Stan never cried, at least not to Richie, and that thought alone makes him want to shake the other boy’s shoulders until tears fall like stars in the sky. He doesn’t, because Stan is here, and no one else is.

“They insisted on going to temple. They said they wanted to be there, at the end. I don’t think it makes any difference. An extra hour of praying won’t save you. It’s all too late now.” He says it like facts, like he knows how death works, and how everything will go down. If Stan told Richie he knew about the afterlife, Richie would believe him. Stan is sure, concrete, even when his eyes glint as his body turns, convulses towards Richie’s with a shudder. His body reaches out, and Richie catches him, bony back pressed against his shoulder. “I said I was staying here. With you. Said I needed to be with you at the end.”

They’re alone now, when it matters. Richie’s parents left, made the drive to the coast, to see the sea one last time. If an asteroid is how it all ends, they’ll be the first to drown under the weight of the waves. Richie hates to think how the last thing he did was stay behind, in the empty house on a street mainly vacated. He always said he would hate to die in Derry, but his feet are glued now, to the only roots he’ll ever have, and the only person he’ll ever have the chance to love.

“You want anything?” He asks Stan, who shakes his head against his shoulder. He’s not looking at Richie, instead at the sky, the presence of the moon the only sure thing against the collapsing solar system. He’s gentle at the end, and even if he wanted to crack a joke, he’d be unable to. There’s no more masking things with a laugh. The end of the world is the perfect time for vulnerability.

They could smoke, if they wanted. Richie has enough weed stashed under his bed to see them floating through the rest of this. He had it stashed away for graduation, but there’s no point saving it anymore. He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to dislodge Stan from where he’s leaning against him. And, what if he misses it? What if he’s halfway under his bed, rooting around for his stash when the world ends? What if Stan sees out the end alone, on Richie’s porch? He could burn up, or freeze out, alone, if Richie leaves. No, he needs to do this sober, and at Stan’s side. The fizzy pink wine barely counts, because he’s downed half of it now and he doesn’t even feel a faint buzz.

“How do you think it’ll happen? How do you think we’ll go out?” Stan asks, his voice making his body tremble a little against where he’s pressed to Richie’s side. He sounds small, but considered, like he hasn’t stopped thinking about how his body will decompose. Richie never cared much to think about the details, just the little things; when did he drink his last glass of milk, and when was the last time he rode on the back of Bill’s bike, and when will he last kiss Stan? He could do it now, but he doesn’t want to disrupt this, and he finds he’s content enough just sitting together and listening to him talk.

He shrugs in answer. “Maybe we’ll burn up. The sun could come too close and fry us all. Or,” he points to the sky, and Stan follows his finger, to where a star is drying up and, shivering, falls away. “One of those could hit our oceans. We’d drown, here in Maine. Maybe those out Midwest would survive but… I wouldn’t want to take the risk. Imagine dying in Nebraska.”

Stan snorts, and the noise is a victory cry to Richie, but it quickly descends to a sniffle, and Stan is dabbing at his face with his palm. At last, tears, Richie thinks, but he feels far from victorious now. There’s only hours to go, and Stan is yet to reach acceptance. There’s still fear, and now Richie feels it too, in his bones. He wishes he were a coward for once, that he had run to the Midwest like the others, taken Stan with him and tried to get him safe.

“It’s like that impossible ‘would you rather’,” Stan says, voice thick with tears and snot, but smiling despite it, pulling back from Richie to look at him, to look at him possible. “Both options sound awful, but you have to pick one.”

“What would you pick?” their hands are splayed on the porch, fingernails inches from the others, digging into the wood chip dirt and the tendrils of weeds poking through. It’s cold, and maybe they are going to freeze to death, but Richie can’t find it in himself to try and warm their bodies through. It’s a futile task, and the only way he would warm himself up now is with Stan’s lips pressed to his, and their bodies interwoven.

“Drowning,” Stan says decisively, and Richie laughs at the certainty, and the sentiment.

“You hate getting wet,” he protests, but Stan is smiling at him like he knows something more, knows the best way to go. Richie is sure the best way for him to go is with his hand clamped to the other boys, squeezing so tightly his hand is red raw and his mind distracted from the cracked, red raw texture of the sky.

“What would you rather?” Stan returns. Richie doesn’t know. He’d rather not think about it, but it’s all he can think about, all occupying the little time left. No, this isn’t what he wants. He doesn’t know what he does want, but it’s not like this. They have time. They could cook dinner. Ride through town on Richie’s bike. Fuck in the shower, even though Stan always said he hated the idea. They could fall in and out, take his dad’s meds and sleep through it all, listen to loud music they always said they hated, or watch movies they never got to the end of.

“I hope it’s peaceful,” is all Richie says, reaching out and grabbing onto Stan’s hand, making sure he’s still there, now the sky is bleeding, angry and aching. “I hope we’re asleep, and that we don’t even wake up, because it’s so gentle. I hope that we don’t drown, or burn, or any of that shit, and if we do… I hope we don’t even notice.”

He won’t notice if he burns alive. Not if Stan is still holding his hands, nails embedded in the palm till they draw blood, and his eyes so full that Richie can’t think about burning, or drowning, or the sky collapsing.

“Do you think it’ll hurt?” Stan asks.

“I hope not.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, I have like seven WIPs but I've been reading lots of poetry and this one screamed Stozier to me so I had to write it


End file.
